


Metatron

by Zenthisoror



Series: In Death Finitely Noted [6]
Category: Death Note
Genre: Gen, Major scene from a minor POV, Technically not an OC since he's in the manga
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-09
Updated: 2016-05-09
Packaged: 2018-06-07 10:48:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6800644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zenthisoror/pseuds/Zenthisoror
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We interrupt your programming to bring you an  important message from the ICPO. Japanese voiceover is provided by the interpreter Yoshio Anderson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Metatron

**Author's Note:**

> I'm aware that the myth that Metatron is the voice of god probably comes from the movie Dogma, but, well, this is just a bit of fun anyway - consider it a homage to both Alan Rickman and His Dark Materials. Yoshio Anderson gets no mention in the anime so here he is, the secret to how Lind L Tailor is speaking Japanese in a supposedly international broadcast and Light doesn't suspect that it's being targeted at Japan.

“Mr Anderson, I thank you for coming at such short notice.”

The call had come in at four in the morning. An hour later, two men in suits sharper than the smell of the factory fug had arrived at Yoshio Anderson’s door.

They had put him in a car. He didn’t see what kind of car because he was blindfolded, but from the purr of the engine and the smooth suspension and the smell of crushed leather, it seemed reasonable to suspect that it wasn’t a Honda civic. The man in the other passenger seat had offered him some sort of toastie. Cheese, or cheese and tomato, or cheese and ham. Yoshio had refused. It was too early for cheese, but he had taken the hot coffee, and after an hour’s drive and speedy briefing, he was he needed to be.

He wasn’t sure where, but from what little he had gathered and what no small amount had been transferred into his bank account, he knew he was expected not to ask many questions and he was happy to comply.

“It’s a pleasure to be working with you, Watari.”

“You were briefed?”

“I was. Although it was a little – “

“Brief?”

Anderson smiled. “Sparse.”

“Can’t be helped, I’m afraid. Come this way.”

Watari led him into what looked to be the set-up of a small studio. White lights were being positioned around a table. Two men were standing on stepladders, stapling a banner with the icon of a world with a pair of scales to the backdrop.  

On the table was a silver plaque reading ‘Lind L. Tailor’ in bold capital letters.

“Is L really going to show his face to the public?”

“Much is at stake. Some sacrifices are necessary.”

Anderson’s interpretators’ booth had a chair and table and a headset, and a Perspex window looking into the studio where L would be speaking. With twenty minutes still to go until the broadcast, he laid a handkerchief on the table and chewed his way slowly through a cranberry and pecan cereal bar. The wrapper promised him it was good for fibre and smooth intestinal passage. He didn’t know about any intestinal passage, but for the time-being it eased his nerves.

An international simultaneous broadcasting event. Anderson wasn’t sure they had had one of those since the moon landing.

Not only an international simultaneous broadcasting event, but the first time L would show his face to the world.

And Yoshio Anderson would be interpreting for him, live, simultaneously, his voice over L’s face, beaming into houses and offices and sounding out over streets all across Japan, his voice as L’s voice, his words as L’s words, the message to Kira delivered through him, as a god may speak through his prophets and angels, heralding calamities to come.

Yoshio Anderson didn’t believe in a benevolent God as his father did, but he believed in something beyond human control and, like his mother, he believed that when it interfered, somebody would always suffer for it. Gods knew no suffering and so knew neither how it was caused nor why they should avoid it. Suffering was man’s lot, as was retelling the story later, and ascribing benevolence to whatever watched over them because it tended to frighten less to imagine occasional kindness and deserving punishment then sadistic indifference.

Anderson picked at a pecan fibre lodged between his teeth and wished for a toothpick.

 Nothing good ever happened when a god chose to speak.   

A knock at the door. Anderson finished his cereal bar and folded up the handkerchief.

“Ready in three minutes, Mr Anderson.”

“Thank you.”

Watari closed the door and when Anderson turned around to look into the studio again, there was a man at the desk with the silver plaque. He sat straight-backed, was well-groomed, wore his grey suit well. He had just the sort of hard, sharp eyes Anderson would have expected of a world-class detective. They travelled quickly as they scanned his notes.

All in all, Anderson was a little underwhelmed although he’d be damned before he could say why. Perhaps it was because L, or Lind L Tailor as was the full name he so grandly displayed on his desk, had turned out to fit too much with his casual expectations. L looked like an officer. L looked like a leader. L looked as if he had sat in front of banners of the world with the scales of the law behind him since his school pictures. L wore a grey suit, and a shirt and a tie, and it was all so predictable as an image of the law that it was almost disappointing.  

Shrugging off the vague feeling of an anti-climax, Anderson adjusted his headset. He didn’t have to worry about what L looked like. All he had to focus on was being his voice.  

An international simultaneous broadcasting event.

Although, really, what was the point of having an international simultaneous broadcasting event? At this hour, the only countries they’d have any decent audience in would be East Asia and Oceania. Nobody would be watching in Americas, Africa or Europe, so presumably they would be doing this a second time over for the benefit of those continents later, by which time, this initial broadcast would probably already be doing its rounds on the internet. Why go to the trouble of broadcasting to all nations in a single swoop? Why do a live broadcast at all?

Unless that was simply what Anderson had been told they would be doing, and the reality was something else entirely.

Unless this was actually a targeted broadcast to East Asia and Oceania because L had already identified, somehow, that Kira was there, which would be fascinating if that was the case -

“Standby,” crackled Watari’s instruction through the headset and Anderson sat forward, listening closely, tongue to teeth like a thumb to trigger.

At the end of the day, it didn’t matter. Anderson wasn’t the man setting out to prove the existence of a god. He was just the voice, a voice of the moment, and all he had to do was choose the perfect words at the perfect time and line them up in the perfect order to drive their message home to Kira - to be the perfect voice for Lind L Tailor.

There was a countdown in the studio. Figures waved hands.

Lind L Tailor put away his note cards and sat up, looked straight ahead, fixed his eyes not on the camera but a little beyond it to a scrolling autocue, its letters in vibrant green.

He took a small breath and Anderson did the same.

“I am Lind L Tailor,” Anderson said, his Japanese the merest beat behind the voice in English coming through his headset, “the one man capable of moving the world’s police into action, more widely known to you as L.”    

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! (If anybody does, I don't know why you did, but it is definitely much appreciated).


End file.
